White to move. How should white proceed?
Source: ChessToday.net
Daily Chess Improvement: Winning Middle Game Tactic!
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White to move. How should white proceed?
Source: ChessToday.net
1.c6 Qd6 (1…bxc6 2.Bc5 or 1…Qxc6 2.Qxc6 bxc6 3.Bc5)
2.Bxg7+ Rxg7
3.Re8#
Black can certainly delay things a bit with 2. …..Kg8 rather than Rxg7, but 3.Bf6 still looks like it should mate at some point no matter where the king runs to after that.
If I hadn’t been lazy and failed to mention what I thought was the best (or the longest) response to Bxg7+ for Black 2.Bxg7+ Kg8 3.Bf6+ Kf8 4.Bxe7+ I wouldn’t have bothered looking for more comments from people and I’d have had a slightly unpleasant surprise when I found out that I’d missed a mate. (I was just looking for ways of getting the WQ to join in the attack on e7 when I noticed the c pawn was on the wrong square in my imagination) 🙂
2…Kg8 3.Bf6+ Kf8 4.Qxh6+ Kg8 5.Qh8+ Kf7 6.Qg7+ Ke8 7.Qg8#
Lol! You beat me to it!
🙂 I forgot there was a pawn on c6 so I thought the BK could escape to d7. I got angry because the machine ate my comment so I didn’t admit that the second time I posted it.
https://chessdailynews.com/difficult-chess-tactic-4/
I’ve been looking back at older puzzles and this is my solution for this based mainly on ideas suggested at the time but not followed up properly.
1.Re3 Nc5
2.Rg3 Rb7
3.Rf4 Kh8 (3…Raa7 4.Nh6+ Kh8 5.Rf8+ Bxf8 6.Rg8#)
4.Rc4 Nb3
5.Rb4 Rxb4 (5…Rab8 6.Rxg7+ Rxg7 7.Rxb8+ Kf7 8.Nxg7)
6.cxb4 Ra7
7.Nxg7 Rxg7 (7…Nd2 8.Ne6+ Kh8 9.Rg4)
8.Rxb3 Rg4 and I think 9.Rg3 draws so 9.Kf2 Rd4 10.b5 and White has made progress.
Oh, I see you left the knight hanging at b3 with 6.Ra7.
I’ve worked out what’s going wrong, if I go back to look at an earlier position and then move back to the main line I don’t put all of the pieces back properly, here I was looking at Raa7 and moved the BK back to g8 and then didn’t put it back on h8 again, and since the diagrammed position seemed to confirm that maybe it was a bit harder for me to realise that I’d made a mistake, when I thought about it without the diagram I realised I’d got it wrong.
Sorry, I thought the BK was on g8 and the bishop couldn’t move but Black has Yancey’s 4…Rf8 or 6….Bd4+ which look very hard to counter effectively.
James,
There was an earlier posting of that puzzle on the 21st of June 2014, too. It contains even more analysis from the commentators. However, it doesn’t seem to cover your proposal of 4.Rc4 attacking the unprotected knight. I just checked my notes, and it was in a list of 4th move alternatives I meant to look at, but it seems I never actually did. However, looking at this, one might prefer 4. ….Rf8 attacking and pinning the unprotected white knight due to the mate threat of Rb1. White will probably have to protect with Rf3, and then black can decide where to put the knight- either b3 or d7 look ok to me as squares. As for your whole line, I really need to think about it more.
Yancey
Strong tactical players like 2.Rg3. Computers like it as well. So we can should forget about 2.Rg3 since if it was the right move somebody would have found something.
The rook pair are extremely flexible on e3 and f4 with scope for moving to the h file or 7th rank and the knight can be supported by g4 which also removes back rank mate threats and might help undermine Black’s K defence. So a tactical solution conditional on Black’s play may be in there somewhere.
The knight can jump to e7 and be supported by d6 and give perpetual check on g6/e7 with a rook on the h file or force the BK into the centre or onto the h file, or fork at g6 and if a Black rook hasn’t moved to defend the second rank or the Black knight interferes with a Black rook’s kingside influence it can’t sacrifice the exchange to stop the knight from giving perpetual check or stop White’s rooks from moving to their 7th rank.
Sorry I was wasting your time with that (unless you managed to get something to work), I was just in a stupidly arrogant mood and you’ve subjected it to plenty of brilliant analysis already so if there is some obscure tactic that wasn’t already covered then it’s almost certainly being mockingly difficult to find on purpose and you should just ignore it.
I’ll make an effort to be less arrogant 🙂